The 56 Files: Part 2 (Take this Tune)

After dropping off Ellie, I headed down the hallway toward my apartment, then stopped before I put my hand on the doorknob. It was ajar—only a bit, but enough to make me feel the sixth sense agents of a certain caliber develop. I loosed my Beretta from my shoulder holster and held it to my side, the dark of the gun blending with the dark weave. Softly, carefully, I pushed it open; a man with fair skin and red hair was looking through papers on my desk. I snapped the gun up, then yelled, “CIA! Put your hands on your head!”

The man jumped and fell to the floor, curling into a ball. “Ow, dude!” he yelled. “Don’t shoot me, man! Geez—gun control!”

I kept him marked. “What are you doing in my apartment? Looking for intelligence reports?”

The man looked up at me, surprised. “Dude, no! This is yours?” He looked at the Beretta uneasily. “Uh, will you shoot me if I get up?”

“No,” I sighed.

The man got up shakily. “Don’t hold guns on people, man. I could’ve gotten sick on your carpet. I’m allergic to weapons, particularly Berettas.”

“Uh-huh. Sure,” I muttered, putting away my weapon, but keeping it loose in the holster. “Now what are you doing in here?”

The man sat down on my computer chair backward, and explained, “Dude, last night, I was coming back from, like, the Greenpeace meeting, and so yeah. And then I went up to, like, my room and my roommate dude was in there, and so I was like ‘hey’ and he was like ‘hey’ and then he hit me over the head with the desk chair. So, well, I woke up Sunday morning with no way to hold my head that didn't hurt, and I was here, man. I was looking for a phonebook, that’s all, I promise, dude. Don’t shoot.”

I looked him over carefully; he certainly didn’t look like a national threat, but that’s the point—national threats rarely look like them until they happen. However, this, er, dude looked pretty harmless in his Birkenstocks and his Inspi(red) t-shirt. What’s the harm? Something was out of place, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I shrugged it off.

I held out a hand and the man took it gratefully, standing up cautiously. My cell phone rang the “Mission: Impossible” theme; it was 24. As I shifted my attention to answer, the man, moving much more quickly than I thought he was capable of, slid a slender needle into the vein in my elbow crook, pressing the plunger down rapidly. My head snapped to it in shock, but my legs buckled under me; as I fumbled for my Beretta, he reached out and took it from the holster, then stepped on and destroyed my phone, settling down comfortably next to me.

“You must have questions, 56,” he said conversationally. “My name is Taran. At the moment I’m working for an organization called Combatientes por la Libertad de Porivia, or the CLP for short. I’ve been given orders not to kill you, just delay you, but...” he hissed, bringing my face inches from mine, all traces of environmental activist hippie gone, “you will die if you come after me in Porivia. Be warned. What we did to the first man will be nothing compared to what we do to you.” I fought to keep my eyes open, to signal 24, to activate my car alarm, anything, but my muscles didn’t respond. As my eyes finally closed against my will, the red-haired man’s face was the last thing I saw.

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